The price paid for a wife varies according to the social position of the parties, but the usual price is between £3 and £5, though a man who has married a shrew will often sell her second-hand for a few shillings. The majority of the people of the Protectorate are Pagans, but Mohammedanism is rapidly spreading among them; and as no good Mohammedan ever touches spirits, the advance of this faith may go a long way to put a stop to the consumption of trade gin, which is the curse of the Coast. The Government is doing everything possible to discourage its use as currency, and the principle of local option has been encouraged with good effect. One large District and portions of two other Districts have been declared prohibited areas into which no spirits can be lawfully imported. One other matter which the Local Government is doing that is likely to result in much good is the effort being made to instruct the native chiefs and their people in sanitation and to teach them an elementary knowledge of hygiene. The Colony and Protectorate of Sierra Leone at the present time comprise an area of approximately 30,000 square miles, and the population, given at the census taken in 1911, is 1,400,000. The Colony has an area of only 256 square miles and a population of 75,000, of which about 600 are Europeans; it is of course the Colony that has so often been referred to in song and story on account of the evil reputation of its climate; it is a case of “give a dog a bad name and it sticks to him.” Sierra Leone was and is still known, though now quite undeservedly, as the White Man’s Grave. Mrs. Falconbridge, the wife of one of the early agents of the Sierra Leone Company, records that during her residence in the Colony (1793–4) it was usual to ask in the morning “how many died last night.” This can still be heard in Freetown as a form of morning greeting, but it now helps to start the day with a laugh, and that in West Africa is about the best tonic known. Captain Chamiers, in his “Life of a Sailor,” says: “I have travelled east, I have travelled west, north and south, ascended mountains, dived in mines, but I never knew and never heard mention of so villainous and iniquitous a place as Sierra Leone. I know not where the Devil’s Poste Restante is, but the place must surely be Sierra Leone.” Burton, in commenting on the above on the occasion of a visit paid to Freetown, the capital of the Colony, prior to writing his interesting book “Wanderings in West Africa,” says in justice to the place, “Here, as elsewhere, the saying may hold good that a certain person may, perhaps, not be so black as he is painted.” The educated Sierra Leonean is proud of the fact that the great Milton in “Paradise Lost” referred to Sierra Leone, even though it was only in connection with the awe-inspiring tornado to which the Colony is frequently subject, in those lines: